I decided to make meatballs for my pantry meal. Not my usual meatballs (from Isa Does It) but something that doesn’t require anything out of the fridge. So I turned to Seitan and Beyond. The recipe in there is entirely Seitan and as I have dried herbs and spices on hand and I get vital wheat gluten on subscription from Amazon everything was in the pantry.

Of course a meal of meatballs would be… monotonous. Thankfully I also get tinned tomatoes on subscription from Amazon. We don’t drive so anything heavy that we use a lot of gets delivered now. So I made up some tomato sauce.

And what to put it on? Well we always have pasta. I like to buy pasta from the zero waste shop in Totnes or from the bulk bins at Real Food in Exeter. I know that the idea is that you can buy just what you need but I live so far away that I tend fill up a whole container and hope it lasts until my next trip.

How did the meal pan out then? Well, pretty badly as it turns out. The meatballs were not a success. They’re basically boiled seitan. Which means they’re quite soggy. And although I’m absolutely normal (yes, I am) I do have a few texture issues and this totally triggered them. I think in future I’ll stick to my tempeh meatballs or slices of the Seitan and Beyond Italian Sausage.